FDR - Jean Edward Smith [357]
* At the request of the War Department, Congress unanimously enacted legislation on March 21, 1942, authorizing the removal of the Japanese from the West Coast (56 Stat. 173). The only objection was raised by Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, who said the bill was constitutionally vague. “I think this is probably the sloppiest criminal law I have ever read or seen anywhere.” But Taft did not vote against it. 90 Congressional Record 2722–2726 (1942).
In two test cases, Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U.S. 81 (1943), and Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), the Supreme Court upheld the curfew and relocation. Said Justice Black, speaking for the Court in Korematsu: “We are not unmindful of the hardships imposed upon a large group of American citizens. But hardships are a part of war, and war is an aggregation of hardships.” Justice Roberts and two former attorneys general, Frank Murphy and Robert Jackson, dissented vigorously.
In 1984 a federal court, in an unusual coram nobis procedure initiated by the University of California at San Diego professor Peter Irons, voided Fred Korematsu’s original conviction because of official misconduct (584 F. Supp. 1406 (N.D. Cal. 1984)). The West Coast military had exaggerated the danger and falsified the evidence. “Fortunately, there are few instances in our judicial history when courts have been called upon to undo such profound and publicly acknowledged injustice,” said the court (584 F. Supp. at 1413). In 1998 President Clinton bestowed on Korematsu the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom.
† Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle was a pioneer in American aviation. In 1922 he made the first transcontinental flight in less than twenty-four hours; in 1929, the first blind instrument-controlled landing; and he won both the Bendix and Thompson trophies for world speed records in 1932. Along the way he picked up a doctorate in aeronautical science from MIT and was an aviation manager for Shell Oil helping to develop aviation fuels when he returned to active duty in 1940.
* With its massive 18-inch guns capable of firing 3,200-pound shells twenty-seven miles, Yamato dwarfed American battleships of the Iowa class. The length of three football fields with a complement of 2,800 men, it had a cruising range of 7,500 miles and a top speed of twenty-seven knots. With Vickers-hardened steel 16 inches thick in places and triple bottoms, no warship was ever so heavily armored. It was sunk on April 6, 1945, off Okinawa following a massive attack by planes from fourteen American carriers. William E. McMahon, Dreadnaught Battleships and Battle Cruisers 215–217 (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978).
* The Soviet Union had requested 4.1 million tons of assistance in 1942, of which only 1.8 million tons were actual military materiel. Eventually it was agreed to reduce overall shipments to Russia to 2.5 million tons, with no reduction in the volume of military equipment the Red Army could use in actual fighting. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins 574 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948).
* Churchill’s skepticism about landing on the Continent in 1942 was more than borne out by the disastrous commando raid at Dieppe in August. Some 5,000 troops, mostly Canadian, landed under hostile fire and suffered horrendous casualties. Nearly 1,000 were killed and another 2,000 taken prisoner. Little damage was inflicted on the Germans. If nothing else, the Dieppe raid demonstrated to Allied planners how difficult it would be to land on a fortified enemy coast. Robin Neillands, The Dieppe Raid: The Story of the Disastrous 1942 Expedition (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006).
* In a 1956 interview with Forrest Pogue, Marshall said, “When I went in to see Roosevelt and told him about the planning [for the North African